Category: Game

A few rolls of quarters may be a cheaper option than buying a bigger house This year’s Game Developers Conference was a coming-out party for virtual reality, with a sprawling lounge area filled with fresh experiences and panel after crowded panel covering the topic. For me, it was my first experience inside the HTC Vive, the room-scale system powered by Steam VR. Two games, Servios’ Raw Data and Arizona Sunshine by Vertigo Games and Jaywalker Interactive, stood out.
Both games share a similar conceit. While they’re room-scale experiences, players are relatively stationary and spin in place to track, and fire guns at, enemies that come from all around them.

Raw Data
Raw Data is a cooperative science fiction game for two players. Projectile weapons include pistols, a shotgun and a compound bow. During my demo I was placed inside the Vive unarmed, and handed two controllers representing my hands. By gripping the controllers I was able to clasp objects in the virtual world. There was a pistol on my right hip, and magazines of ammunition on my left. Reaching down I could unholster my gun and then load it.
Wave after wave of robotic enemies streamed into the room, and by aiming down the sights I was able to perform headshots with ease. Dual-wielding pistols was extremely satisfying, as I could spread my arms out wide, firing in two directions at once like an action hero.
The shotgun was a little more problematic. Hefting it, I immediately tried to bring the weapon to my shoulder and promptly smacked myself in the face with my controller. In trying to get a good cheek weld to see down the sights I confused the Vive, and the gun shifted to my opposite shoulder. In the end, the most effective way for me to use the shotgun was to fire it from the hip.
The weapon I had the most fun with was the bow, which allowed for unlimited ammunition as well as explosive bolts when pulled from an invisible quiver over my right shoulder. Due to the long shaft of the arrow I was easily able to place my shots, reaching across the room to drop robots before they got anywhere close.
There was also a laser katana, which powered up like a lightsaber. It was great for quick slashing attacks, and when used two-handed, allowed me to redirect a large grenade round back at the enemy. While in bullet-time mode, all it took was a simple flick of my wrist to send three robots flying.

Arizona Sunshine
The multiplayer mode of Arizona Sunshine was very similar in setup to Raw Data. I started unarmed in a rocky canyon with another player among a series of crates. There was a Beretta 9 mm on a table in front of me, as well as an ammunition belt. By pressing the Vive’s triggers, I was able to pick up the belt, strap it to my avatar’s chest and arm myself with the pistol.
The first few waves of zombies came slowly at first, and by aiming down the sights of the gun in virtual reality I was again able to plink them right in the head, thereby conserving ammunition. Slowly, more and more zombies, and a second pistol, were introduced, and the gameplay loop became all about keeping my guns loaded and firing at all times.
I extended one arm to fire, emptied the magazine, then returned the weapon to my chest to reload it, cycling back and forth between the 9 mm and .50-caliber Desert Eagle as I spun. Later a sawed-off shotgun entered the game, as well as an Uzi submachine gun — both conspicuously without stocks. Clearly the developers had engineered out the urge for players to shoulder the weapon, given the limitations of the Vive system.
Before long I was tossing magazines back and forth with my partner, sharing ammunition while I picked off enemies that were closing in on him from behind. While I didn’t get the chance to use it, there was a huge hypodermic needle in the game that, when slammed into my heart, would have slowed the game down to bullet time.
The developers said that in bullet time it was possible to drop a magazine and catch a fresh one — thrown by another player — inside the weapon, thereby reloading it in the most Hollywood way possible.
Where do you put one of these things?
After playing both demos, two things have become very clear to me.
First, I want a Vive. Both Raw Data and Arizona Sunshine succeeded in convincing me of the promise of virtual reality gunplay. It’s intuitive, it’s challenging and it’s an incredible amount of fun. In Raw Data I even worked up a decent sweat.
Second, I can’t own a Vive right now because my house is way, way too small. The amount of space required to flail around with one of these systems is huge, and without emptying a bedroom in my home I’d still be scraping my knuckles along the ceiling. Even with a spotter, I managed to kick out the cables in one system, throw the headphones off my head of another, and later, bounce my fist off a hotel television.
Keeping my feet clear of the Vive’s tether created both a gameplay handicap and a physical danger
Yes, I’m 6 and a half feet tall and take up a lot of space, but simply keeping my feet clear of the Vive’s tether created both a gameplay handicap and a physical danger. Without that cable recognized as a moving object by the Vive’s sensor and rendered in the game world so I can see where it is, there’s no way I could safely play either of these games without someone there to serve as a lookout.
However, both teams told me they were interested in bringing their products to arcades. In fact, the Arizona Sunshine developers say they’re already in talks with VRcade, a company that manufactures VR installations for places like Dave & Buster’s.
With luck, we’ll begin to see these types of installations soon. In the meantime, if you’re interested in a Vive system, I can’t recommend these two titles enough. Just understand that now is the time to start thinking about where in your home you’ve actually got enough room to safely play them.

GDC talk looks at the complexity of games based on historical events History is the chaos of human events, formed into narrative upon a sloppy potter’s wheel. This is what makes it so compelling.
The myths and certainties tilt between facts of things that actually happened and interpretations, re-orderings, designed to serve us in the here and now. Bombs were dropped on London in the early 1940s. Fact. The Brits thumbed their noses at the outrage. Story.
“History is full of really bad decisions. It’s a process."
Video game designers must take this ill-formed mess and render it into highly predictable systems that always do what the player expects them to do. The only way this can realistically be accomplished is by pretending that certain facts are malleable, and that certain stories are immutable.
On Thursday at Game Developers Conference, Chris King, a game designer at Paradox, sought to make sense of this … well … paradox. The studio where he works specializes in game franchises about the past, like Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis and Victoria.
"Computer games rely on logic," he said. "But history is not logical. History is full of really bad decisions. It’s a process." But there have been philosophers who believed that history is a process with an actual point, who believed that, like a line of computer code, it consisted of things that inevitably leads to other things. Karl Marx was one such. But for now, we should follow King’s logic. He gets to Marx in a while.

Even the best historical games take severe liberties with the source material. Sid Meier’s Civilization games allow you to take charge of the American empire and the city of Washington in the year 4,000 BC, a time when George Washington’s ancestors were painting themselves with woad and dancing around trees on a foggy island in the North Sea.
King gave examples of how Paradox sought to deal with history’s complexity. In Europa Universalis 4, players take over an Age of Discovery nation state and seek to build an empire. This opens up tricky problems. Cortes was a chancer who rode his luck. Was it inevitable that Spain would conquer Mexico, the most powerful empire in the Americas?
Spain was the superpower of that era. Should Spain be given Mexico at the start of the game, or does that overpower one nation? But if Mexico is a prize available to any European nation, that might trigger weird situations where the Spanish are defending the Aztecs.
The final game gives the Spanish a slight advantage in conquering Mexico, but not so much that it’s a gimme. "You can end up with English Mexico or French Mexico," said King. The designers wanted to give players the opportunity to conquer Mexico, while placing the reasonable possibility that it would fall to Spain as part of the game.
"Players enjoy painting the map with their color," he said. "You always want to let players do the things they enjoy, and not do the things they don’t enjoy."

A similar trick was pulled in Hearts of Iron 4, set during World War II. The game requires that German players trigger global warfare by seeking to annex neighbors. But, as we all know, this was a disastrous move, most especially for Germany.
So the game is designed to ensure that a war begins, even if it’s not instigated by Germany. With that in mind, German players are more likely to launch the war, in order to gain first-mover advantage. However, in the real period, it’s not at all likely that Britain or the Soviet Union would have launched a war, without the provocation of German expansion.
Perhaps the most interesting example (and this is when we get to Marx) is from Victoria 2, which is set during 19th Century European colonialism in Africa. Awkwardly for the game’s desire to be realistic, the fact is that African colonies did not pay their conquerors. They tended to lose vast sums of money, not to mention lives. How does that fit into a strategy game, which relies on the concept or rewards for victories?

Some have suggested that European countries pursued colonization in order to gain prestige against their rivals. Undoubtedly, jingoistic invasions were prompted by a desire to distract the public from domestic concerns, like inequality and mass exploitation of workers. But none of this helps the game designer.
The answer comes from political philosopher Karl Marx, who argued that the foreign adventures of capitalist states are driven primarily by a desire to secure raw materials and by a wish to create captive markets of new consumers for exports. Indians, under the British Empire, were sold clothes that had been manufactured in Manchester.
The gross immorality of European expansion and wars of conquest (then, as now) is rarely a part of these games. The problem of creating systems out of moral considerations is a long way from being resolved, and certainly a long way behind systems based on avarice and power. Whether it is immoral for us to enjoy fantasies based on historical exploitation is a separate, but compelling question.
Moral considerations do not fit in with "coloring the map" which is the kick players enjoy. Marx believed that colonization and international exploitation was a deterministic process, that would inevitably usher in revolt, the fall of capitalism and the rise of global communism. Although the revolt came, and the Empires went, he hasn’t been proved correct in his ultimate conclusions. But as King pointed out, Marx’s historical system, which posits inevitabilities, looks a lot like computer programming. If X happens then Y follows.
The pursuit of raw materials, and the deprivations of same from rivals, offers up a compelling drive for rapacious countries and for strategy gamers, many decades later, looking for a rewarding challenge.
"History is complicated," said King. "It’s difficult to balance. It’s intricacies are hard to express. History is hard."

You can lug it around if you want, though The laptop graphics-amping Razer Core supports non-Razer laptops, but it’s not really designed to be carted around with you, Razer’s director of product marketing, Kevin Sather, told Polygon.
The Core went on pre-order last night for $499 (or $399, if you buy it with a supported Razer laptop).
The graphics card enclosure doesn’t start shipping until April, but people are already wondering how else they can use the Core beyond as a graphics amp for a Razer laptop. In particular, people are curious about whether the Core could be used with a laptop as a portable gaming rig.
“We didn’t design it to be portable. We didn’t put a handle on it," Sather said. "But it’s definitely something that could be taken out of the home. It weighs under 11 pounds.
"We have tossed it into our backpacks and taken with us to events."

Despite toting the Core around themselves, Sather said that Razer was caught a little off guard by how many people are asking about portability of what is essentially a docking station.
"We designed it to be this thing that sits on your desk, but people want to know if they can move it from room to room, or bring it to a friend’s house or a LAN party," he said. "I think one of the reasons people are thinking about it that way is because you wouldn’t need to bring a display with you."
That’s because the Core can pass the graphics card information back to the supported Razer laptops, both of which have a 4K display option.
The Core is a slick rectangular box with rounded corners and a mesh metal screen on one side that allows users to see the interior lighting and for air to pass through for cooling. It supports compatible double-wide, full-length, PCI Express x16 cards from AMD and Nvidia. (The cards are sold separately.) The enclosure includes a 500 W power supply, four USB 3.0 ports, a gigabit Ethernet port and two-zone lighting.
One zone is inside the Core and the other adds downlighting.
The unit uses a Thunderbolt USB-C port to connect to a compatible laptop, and can transfer data at up to 40 Gbps. While it is designed to allow a mobile user to essentially turn their laptop into a more powerful, docked gaming system complete with your own plugged in mouse, keyboard and monitor; it can also be used just to increase the graphics power of the laptop.
The one drawback of relying on the laptop’s screen instead of a separate monitor is that the data has to be piped to the graphics card and then back to the laptop. Using an external monitor, Sather said, would likely be a "bit better."

"But the capabilities of the laptop would still be improved," he said.
While there does seem to be some demand for the Core as portable device, Sather said it’s unlikely Razer would redesign it to better suit that purpose.
"We are really happy with the design as it is now," he said. "It’s sleek and compact. We wanted to keep a design consistent with the materials and colors we use. And we can fit it in our backpack with a notebook."
The Core does actually have a handle, but it’s one that, when lifted, unlocks the system so an owner can slide out the PCIe slot to add or change the graphics card. Sather said Razer warns owners in the instruction manual not to use that handle for carrying around the Core, lest it fall open.
In terms of compatibility with non-Razer laptops, Sather said the Core is designed to be open to any laptop that can support it. That means that a laptop needs to fully support the external graphics standard for Intel’s Thunderbolt connection.
"It’s on the bleeding edge of these standards," Sather said. "Anyone who adheres to it should have a laptop that supports it." The only system Sather knew of that does support the standard is a recently announced Intel NUC mini-computer.
Finally, I asked Sather if Razer may start offering bundle deals with the Core and a graphics card.
"It’s something we definitely want to explore," he said. "But I think in the short term is on the discount."

Episodic series promises plenty of Bruce to go with your Bats At a panel at SxSW Gaming today, Telltale Games discussed its work on the upcoming Batman series titled, simply, Batman: A Telltale Games Series. Most notably, Telltale’s Job Stauffer revealed the rough release window for the game. “We’ll be premiering this summer," Stauffer said. But because of the way that Telltale makes its games, "There’s not a lot we can show you until we’re really close to premiering," Stauffer said.
Developing …

Movie was let go one week before release The Little Prince was supposed to open today in theaters across the country, but after Paramount Pictures dropped it from their release schedule last week, the film’s distribution future seemed bleak.
Now, however, it looks like the movie may have found a new home. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix has acquired the distribution rights to the film and will bring it to subscribers. The film was taken over in Canada by eOne and is currently playing in theaters.
Internationally, The Little Prince made $80 million overseas last summer when the film was released in France and was even given the country’s Cesar award for Best Animated Film.
Polygon has reached out to comment from Paramount about why it decided not to release the movie seven days before release. There’s currently no word on when the movie will be available on Netflix.

Console life cycles could be getting shorter Sony is working on a “PlayStation 4.5," a more powerful version of the PlayStation 4 that will be able to play games at 4K resolution, according to a report from Kotaku.
Kotaku cited multiple "developers who have spoken with Sony" about the purported console. Those sources indicated that the "PS4.5" — no word on whether that’s the official name — will include improved graphics hardware to power 4K games, and additional processing power for PlayStation VR, the virtual reality headset that Sony is releasing in October.
There are no indications of a release window or price for the "PS4.5," although one of Kotaku’s sources told the publication that such a device might not be released this year. Sony currently sells the PS4 for $349.99, having dropped the price of the console in October from $399.99, which is what it cost when it launched in November 2013. PlayStation VR will cost $399, although that does not cover the required PlayStation Camera accessory.
The PS4 cannot currently output 4K content, and its optical drive cannot read 4K Blu-ray discs. Masayasu Ito, executive vice president at Sony Computer Entertainment, said in an interview with 4Gamer in October (via Siliconera) that Sony was considering an enhanced PS4 that could support 4K Blu-ray discs. Neil Hunt, Netflix’s chief product officer, told Huffington Post UK in January that Sony had "promised" Netflix that a new revision of the PS4 hardware with 4K support was coming. And Netflix told Forbes in February that it expected hardware refreshes this fall from both Sony and Microsoft with 4K video playback for the PS4 and Xbox One, respectively.

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Phil Spencer signals Xbox One hardware upgrades

If Sony is indeed considering a mid-cycle hardware upgrade, the company may not be alone. During a presentation to the media last month, Xbox head Phil Spencer posited a future in which Microsoft will "come out with new hardware capability during a generation."
Spencer contrasted the typical console life cycle with that of computers, smartphones and tablets, telling Polygon that the latter category of hardware offers "a very continuous evolution cycle in hardware, whereas between console generations most of the evolution is making it cheaper and potentially making it smaller." He also noted that PCs and mobile devices gradually get more and more powerful without locking out existing software like new gaming platforms usually do.
In particular, Spencer highlighted PlayStation VR as an example of Sony adding a new feature to the PS4 — virtual reality — without "changing what the core console is about," suggesting that Microsoft would want to do something similar, but in a way that would deliver better-playing games. Spencer later noted in an appearance on Major Nelson’s podcast that he wasn’t saying Microsoft would allow Xbox owners to open up their console and upgrade the parts. Instead, said Spencer, his comments were meant as a "longer-term vision statement."
We’ve reached out to Sony for comment, and will update this article with any information we receive.

This bundle gives you everything you need Sony announced that the PlayStation VR platform would cost $399 and launch this October during the 2016 Game Developer’s Conference, but the company left out the fact that the system requires the $60 PlayStation 4 camera to function. While it may be true that many players already own the camera, the fact it’s mandatory does add a bit to the price discussion.
Sony has now announced that it will be selling a bundle that has every piece of hardware you need, or could want, for playing virtual reality games on the PlayStation 4. The bundle will sell for $499.99 in the US or $599.99 in Canada, and comes with the following:

All contents of the PS VR core bundle:
PS VR headset
PS VR cables Stereo
Headphones
PlayStation VR Demo Disc
PlayStation Camera 2
PlayStation Move motion controllers
PlayStation VR Worlds (disc)

“Starting at 7:00 a.m. PT on Tuesday, March 22nd, pre-orders will open for the PlayStation VR Launch Bundle at participating retailers," the official blog post states.
If you wanted to know the price of everything you will need or could want to play all existing virtual reality experiences, this is the bundle for you. You also certainly get your money’s worth with the three extra pieces of hardware and the PlayStation VR Worlds experiences.

“I know we disappointed many people" A Microsoft Xbox-hosted party during the 2016 Game Developers Conference last night featured women dancing on platforms, rightfully angering many attendees — both men and women — and reminding many in the industry that even an often progressive company like Microsoft can contribute to the video game industry’s long history of sexual objectification of women at professional events.
What makes this situation all the more jarring is that it took place the very same day as Microsoft’s well-received 16th annual (!) Women in Gaming Luncheon. Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, sent an email to the entire Xbox team, and published it on the Xbox Wire blog, taking responsibility for the event and calling it "unequivocally wrong." Here’s Spencer’s letter in full:

How we show up as an organization is incredibly important to me. We want to build and reflect the culture of team Xbox – internally and externally – a culture that each one of us can represent with pride. An inclusive culture has a direct impact on the products and services we deliver and the perception consumers have of the Xbox brand and our company, as a whole.
It has come to my attention that at Xbox-hosted events at GDC this past week, we represented Xbox and Microsoft in a way that was absolutely not consistent or aligned to our values. That was unequivocally wrong and will not be tolerated. This matter is being handled internally, but let me be very clear – how we represent ourselves as individuals, who we hire and partner with and how we engage with others is a direct reflection of our brand and what we stand for. When we do the opposite, and create an environment that alienates or offends any group, we justly deserve the criticism.
It’s unfortunate that such events could take place in a week where we worked so hard to engage the many different gaming communities in the exact opposite way. I am personally committed to ensuring that diversity and inclusion is central to our everyday business and our core values as a team – inside and outside the company. We need to hold ourselves to higher standards and we will do better in the future.

In a separate comment emailed to Polygon, Spencer repeated some of this message, and acknowledged, "I know we disappointed many people."

At Xbox-hosted events at GDC this past week, we represented Xbox and Microsoft in a way that was not consistent or aligned to our values. It was unequivocally wrong and will not be tolerated. I know we disappointed many people and I’m personally committed to holding ourselves to higher standards. We must ensure that diversity and inclusion are central to our everyday business and core values. We will do better in the future.

Aaron Greenberg, head of games marketing for Xbox, said on Twitter that he was "very disappointed" to see images of the dancers.

@ZenMobius @XboxP3 @Xbox @Microsoft @Spacekatgal @GDC Very disappointed to see this, going to follow up with team.
— Aaron Greenberg (@aarongreenberg) March 18, 2016

The event — clearly branded as a Microsoft-hosted party in the invitation obtained by Polygon below — took place at 1015 Folsom, a nightclub located about a half mile from GDC, from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. PT. Attendees picked up their passes from Microsoft’s Business Suite in the Moscone Center complex where GDC takes place, leaving little question as to the official sanction of the software and gaming giant in the proceedings.

The image below from an attendee offers a glimpse of the party’s atmosphere, and of the scantily clad dancers performing there.

Great fun at the Microsoft Xbox party with a million geeks! #gamedev #gdc #gdcplay #sanfrancisco
A photo posted by Henning Ludvigsen (@henningludvigsen) on Mar 17, 2016 at 11:29pm PDT

Three years ago, the International Game Developers Association found itself in a similar situation in which scantily clad female dancers were hired to perform at a GDC party. The event prompted members, including designer Brenda Romero — then co-chair of the IGDA Women in Games special interest group — to resign from the organization.

It’s fighting time Legendary Pictures reportedly hosted a surprise screening of Duncan Jones’ Warcraft film this past week in Los Angeles, but for those that couldn’t attend, the studio has also released a new teaser.
The teaser features Travis Fimmel’s Sir Anduin Lothar, a knight for the Kingdom of Azeroth better known as the Lion of Azeroth, taking on a giant orc. They’re in the middle of what appears to be a desert, with skulls and other various bones scattered among them.
The video focuses pretty heavily on the various characters — both in Lothar’s army of human soldiers and a gang of orcs — as they prepare for war. There are some shots of the different lands World of Warcraft fans will be familiar with, too.
Jones’ movie will follow the orc and human races, once bitter enemies, as they come together to take on a new and bigger threat. Although there are issues within both armies over the newfound comradeship, it’s evident this is the only option the orcs have after being forced to move away from the land they called home.
Warcraft, which stars Fimmel alongside Toby Kebbell, Paula Patton, Ben Foster and Dominic Cooper, hits theaters June 10.

Time to upgrade to an Xbox One ESPN and Microsoft are retiring the Xbox 360’s ESPN app on March 23, according to a notice posted in the app.
Microsoft confirmed the ESPN app’s shutdown to Polygon in a statement that is essentially identical to the message in the app, which was first reported by Deadspin. The app debuted in November 2010, offering content such as live sporting events and personalized scores and highlights. Two years later, Microsoft and ESPN added live programming from all ESPN networks, including shows such as SportsCenter.
The shutdown applies only to the Xbox 360; the Xbox One’s ESPN app will continue to operate, and Microsoft noted as much in its statement, directing users to “check out ESPN on Xbox One for everything you love about ESPN on Xbox 360."

Asked for additional details on the closure of the Xbox 360 app, an ESPN spokesperson declined further comment. But an ESPN source indicated to Polygon that usage of the ESPN app on Xbox 360 has been dropping since the launch of the Xbox One in November 2013. The Xbox 360 itself is well over 11 years old, having debuted in November 2005.
ESPN remains accessible on external devices including computers, tablets and streaming set-top boxes through the WatchESPN app. However, the Xbox One is now the only video game console that offers an ESPN app.